Ellen Kean

[1] She gained experience touring in the provinces, and from 1826 was a regular member of the companies at the Drury Lane and Haymarket Theatres, making a success in The Wonder and The Youthful Queen.

[2] At Covent Garden she took on the roles of Shakespeare's Romeo to the Juliet of Fanny Kemble, Françoise de Foix in Francis the First, and Lady Townley in The Provoked Husband.

[1] For the next nine years they appeared together at the Haymarket, completing a tour of William Shaftoe Robertson's Lincoln Circuit in 1845, where she gave 'an exquisite impersonation' of Miss Halley in The Stranger, and in The Honey Moon she was described as 'perfectly inimitable'; they attracted profitable houses before making a joint visit to the U.S. in 1846.

[2] Ellen Terry, who made her first stage appearance as the boy Mamillius in The Winter's Tale, remembered Kean "as Hermione wearing a Greek wreath round her head and a crinoline with many layers of petticoats.

The Times in its obituary said, "Mrs Kean is not to be numbered with the greatest votaries of the English stage, but her acting was distinguished by considerable power, tenderness and refinement."

Ellen and Charles Kean in Macbeth
Ellen Kean